


Lonely Fortunes

by Skinandpit



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2018-01-10 08:08:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1157174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skinandpit/pseuds/Skinandpit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he’s ten years old, Dean stands Sam up against the red brick wall of a fallen-down schoolhouse and tells him he’s going to shoot an apple off his head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lonely Fortunes

When he’s ten years old, Dean stands Sam up against the red brick wall of a fallen-down schoolhouse and tells him he’s going to shoot an apple off his head. It’s the kind of thing that cowboys do.

Sam is six and endlessly trusting. He won’t eat oatmeal on Tuesdays and refuses to pee in public bathrooms unless Dean comes in and wipes the toilet seat first, but right now he’s standing just where he’s put, waiting for Dean to fire a bullet not inches above his brain.

“It’s gonna be awesome,” Dean tells him, arranging Sam’s shoulders so they’re even. “Stay still and don’t slouch.” 

It’s a blistering summer, dry as dust, and Dean figures his little brother is just as bored as he is. 

Dad dumped them at Bobby’s place a couple days back for some reason he won’t give. Bobby put up with them terrorizing the house, playing make-believe with his owl statues and building pillow forts in the living room, until he caught Dean tying hundred-year-old charmed necklaces into Sam’s too-long hair. After that, he tucked a location pendent into each of their pockets and told them to go explore outside — guessing, rightly, that the two of them could find something entertaining in a junkyard full of battered old cars, but not counting on the shortness of their attention spans.

Dean’s tired of ‘pretend-we’re-driving and hide-and-seek and who-can-jump-off-the-tallest-car-and-not-squeal-like-a-bitch (that last game had ended after about two minutes, when Dean realized that Sam has the pain threshold of a rhinoceros on steroids). Sam lopes along after him, dutifully doing whatever Dean tells him to do. He’d stood guard while Dean snuck inside to steal something cool from Bobby’s aresnal. 

Maybe Dean’s never fired a gun on his own but he’s done it plenty of times with Dad, and Dad always says he’s a wicked sharpshooter. Dad doesn’t lie. 

So. An apple. He can do that. 

He raises the gun and looks through the sights at Sam, who is staring back at him with that eerie nonplussed blankness Dean’s come to recognize as absolute faith. 

“Ready?” he says. “Don’t flinch, or you’re a bitch.”

Sam doesn’t move. 

Dean squeezes the trigger. 

The gun roars. The noise of it would have been enough to knock him over even if the kickback hadn’t thrown him flat on his ass. It’s somehow louder without Dad to hold his elbows in the right place. Dean drops the gun without meaning to, sternum aching, hands stinging, and swears with every single word he can think of. Growning up around hunters, he’s picked up a few things, one of which is that you’re a pansy if you show any sort of pain but it doesn’t count if you swear a blue streak while doing it.

He hauls himself back up to his feet, eyes watering, then looks at Sam to see if he got the apple.

Sam’s thrown himself flat to the ground, hands pressed tight over both his ears. He’s got his face all squished up, nose wrinkled as a rabbit’s, his too-long hair falling all over him so it looks like he doesn’t have any eyes. 

“Sammy?” 

Sam doesn’t say anything. 

Dean walks over, and kicks him in the foot. “Hey, Sam. Sam.”

Sam looks up. “Did you get it?” he says. He’s got a little kid voice, not sweet like the ones on TV, but unabashedly raspy. He always sounds kind of like the Godfather, voice all flat, not old enough to realize he’s got to emote. He crawls to his feet. He’s shaking for some reason, but he doesn’t look hurt, so Dean doesn’t worry. 

Dean looks around. The apple is lying just by Sam’s foot. He picks it up — it’s bruised, but there’s no bullet in it. “Nah,” he says. “You flinched. I can’t hit it if you drop it on the ground, idiot.”

“Check again,” Sam says, sure as anything. “I bet you got it anyway.” 

Dean turns the apple over, then fakes a double-take. “Whaddya know.” 

“Told you,” Sam says. “Lemmie see.” 

Dean takes a big bite out of the apple and makes a big show out of gulping while Sam looks on. “Swallowed it,” Dean says.

Sam stares at him, his face growing slowly redder and redder, all the muscles in his body tensing, clearly pissed as all hell. He smacks his fists against his side. 

“You _jerk_ ,” he says. “I wanna see, you shot it at my head, I wanna _see_ ,”

“You’re acting like a baby,” Dean says, “Babies don’t get to see bullets.” 

“I wanna _see,_ ” Sam bellows, his face bright red and his eyes just about bugging out of his head. 

“Mm,” says Dean. “Tastes like — _ooof._ ” 

Sam’s just about the right size to headbutt Dean in the gut and make it count. Dean crumples over, tears in his eyes, that pain from the barrel of the gun shooting sharp and bright through his body. Sam kicks him in the thigh. 

“You’re such a jerk,” he howls, then lets out a little mousey eep when he sees Dean start too stand up. 

“I’m gonna kill you,” Dean tells him. “I’m gonna —“

And then Sam’s running, fast as a jackrabbit, and Dean’s following after him, the gun forgotten in the woods behind him, his sternum aching. The dry summer thorns tear at his pant legs, but they can’t get at him through the denim. 

Sam’s screaming up ahead, making it easy for Dean because he’s just a little kid and he doesn’t know yet about danger, not really, his voice wordless and unbroken, this howl that’s all kinds of human. Old blackbirds that burst out of trees like heartbeats, and the whole woods turns silent as he passes, unaccustomed to the new manner of beast. 

“I’m gonna _kill you dead!_ ” Dean shouts after him. 

The sun is bright overhead, and his sweat plasters his t-shirt to his neck and it all hurts kind of, but he doesn’t care. He’s ten years old and Sam is six and the whole world is theirs and nothing bad is going to happen — not now, not ever, not while Dean’s around to keep his little brother safe.


End file.
